November 1, 2022
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — in other words, enterprises with fewer than 250 persons employed — are often referred to as the backbone of the European economy, providing jobs and growth opportunities.
The overwhelming majority (2020: 99%) of enterprises in the EU’s non-financial business economy were enterprises with fewer than 49 persons employed (micro and small enterprises), followed by medium enterprises (50-249 persons employed) with less than 0.9% of all enterprises. In contrast, just 0.2% of all enterprises had 250 or more persons employed and were large enterprises.
This information comes from data published by Eurostat today. The article presents a handful of findings from the more detailed Statistics Explained article on structural business statistics.
Value added decreased by 6% in 2020
In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, many enterprises closed, and employees were laid off. Consequently, the non-financial business economy reported €6.5 trillion in value added at factor cost, a significant decrease (-6%) compared with 2019 (€6.9 trillion). SMEs recorded €3.4 trillion in value added, representing a smaller decrease of 5% (€3.9 trillion in 2019).
The number of persons employed in the non-financial business economy amounted to 127.7 million in 2020, down 3% from 131.5 million in 2019.
The total number of enterprises increased slightly to 23.4 million, a 1% increase from 23.2 million in 2019. However, the increase was only in the number of SMEs. The number of large enterprises decreased by 3.4% (43 500 in 2019 to 42 000 in 2020).
SMEs showed a fair resilience during the year 2020, recording a smaller decrease in value added than large enterprises, and increasing in number compared to the previous year.
Employment in the non-financial business economy
In 2020, there were 23.3 million SMEs in the EU’s non-financial business economy, contributing over half of the total value added (52%, €3.4 trillion).
SMEs employed 82.0 million people in 2020, accounting for 64% of all employed. Over half of them were employed in three economic activities: distributive trades sector (19.9 million people, 26% of micro and small enterprises and 20% of medium-sized enterprises’ employment), manufacturing (15.3 million people, 14% and 32%) and construction (11.2 million, 15% and 8%).
Source: Eurostat
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